


Beverly Marsh Grows Up

by Aestheticdenbrough



Series: losers growing up [2]
Category: IT (1990), IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Chores, Cooking, Dolls, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Laundromat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2019-06-13 16:03:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15368187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aestheticdenbrough/pseuds/Aestheticdenbrough
Summary: Bev goes to play with Greta.





	1. Bruised

Beverly runs her fingers through her hair, tattered fingernails from biting them getting caught in the thin strands. She eyes her reflection in the mirror, at age six you'd think that she doesn't have any issues with her appearance. Despite her young age, experiences have aged her at least a few years, leaving her with a mind trained on things that usually only older girls care about.

She steps back, looking down at the bruise on her side, climbing from her hip and up to just below her rib. She pokes it with a morbid curiosity with a flinch that she should have expected in the first place. She stands on her toes and looks in the mirror to see how noticable it must be. She sighs, getting back down onto the flats of her feet.

She dresses herself, a gingham dress and her usual brown buckle Mary Jane's. She pulls her socks up when they slouch, twirling around to watch the fabric ripple beneath her. She smiles to herself, in the midst of a rare innocent moment, her dad out of the house and her mother in the parlor, who'd told her that she is allowed to go out today.

She collects up her dolls in her arms, setting off to the neighbors house to play with their daughter, Greta. She keeps an excited skip in her step, trying to forget about the bruise on her side, not wanting anyone else to notice. Beverly Marsh is just old enough to understand that what her father does is wrong, but also old enough to be scared to tell anyone. 

She climbs the steps to the worn front door, rapping her knuckles against the wood confidently to be let in. Greta's mother comes to the door, giggling about who knows what and playing with a ringlet in her hair. "Oh hello, Miss Marsh!" She exclaims, which makes Beverly smile, she feels grown up when people call her by her last name.

"Hello, Mrs. Keene! Is Greta able to play?" She asks, peering behind the woman into the house to see if Greta was present. 

"She is! She's up in her room, you can just go join her," the woman says with a sweet smile, knowing that Bev knows where to go as she's been here countless times before, stepping into the house and slipping off her Mary Janes.

She scurries off to the room that she knows as Greta's, opening the door and sliding in, closing it behind her. "Hey!" She grins, Greta turning around from her dollhouse to greet her.

"Hi!" Greta returns, happy with the surprise of her friend. "I love your dress," she compliments as Bev takes a seat next to her. 

"Thank you! Yours is nice too," Bev smiles, finding a good spot near the dollhouse. "I got a new doll! She's a good person with lots of problems and she doesn't have parents and when boys come near her she kicks 'em in the nuts," she grins, her own problems obvious in how she characterizes her toy.

Greta's expression goes confused from her original enthusiastic reaction. "But how does she get a boyfriend?" The young girl asks, tucking her curly blonde hair behind her ear.

"She doesn't! She's good all by herself. Boys are yucky and mean, she doesn't need one," Bev says with a shrug.

"What about having babies? A mommy and a daddy have to get married to make a baby," Greta asks, her eyebrows furrowed in her unsureness.

"She doesn't need them! Or she can adopt- lots of little babies don't have homes," Bev shrugs, "And the baby doesn't need a daddy," she adds surely.

Greta just nods, not sure how else to react, Beverly had obviously thought this through and wasn't changing her mind. "Okay!" She responds enthusiastically, grabbing her Barbie and brushing her fingers through the doll's hair, "You already know Lea!" She says, referencing the character her doll often had.

"Yep!" Bev agrees, scooting to the dollhouse to put her doll in it, and the two start playing. It goes well for quite a while, as these two get on well often.

At one point, though, Greta disagrees with how Beverly's doll treats hers, taking it personally and shouting at Bev. "Hey! That was rude!" Greta shouts, shoving Bev's shoulder.

Beverly doesn't take too well to violence, her racing thoughts trying to decide if she wants to retaliate while hot tears bubble up to her tear ducts. "No! She did it in self defense!" Bev disagrees, swiping her palm across her eyes, _don't want Greta to see me cry._

She takes a deep breath, waiting for Greta to say anything in response. "But she was mean!" The girl retaliates.

Anger rises in Bev's chest, _I know it's irrational, I know it's irrational_ , she reminds herself, taking in another breath to calm herself. "She was just hurt and scared," she says softly, not wanting the situation to escalate further.

"It's almost time for dinner, Bev, you wanna stay?" Greta asks, keeping her own tone more quiet, recognizing Bev's response.

"Sorry, Greta, I think my mother wants help with supper tonight," Beverly lies, feeling a lot like she had to get out of there for now, and possibly spend time with her mom before her father returned from work, _yeah, that would be nice_ , she affirms herself.

Greta nods, putting her doll down to stand, pulling Bev up by her hand, pulling her into an apologetic hug, "I'm sorry I yelled," she whispers.

Bev is taken aback by the hug, taking a moment to return it, ignoring how Greta was squeezing her bruise uncomfortably, there is no malice meant and it's _definitely_ not Greta's fault.

She heads out, her toy in tow, skipping down the pavement to reach her own home again, sighing in relief when she sees that her father isn't home yet. She lets herself in, locking it behind herself as she's always been taught.

She slips off her shoes in the entryway, going to put her doll away before meeting her mother in the kitchen. "Do ya'need any help?" She asks, hopping up on the counter clumsily. 

"I could use a potato peeler?" Her mother suggests with a soft smile, grabbing the peeler to hand to her daughter.

"Okay!" Bev agrees with a grin, grabbing the cutting board, and going about peeling a small potato next to her mother, who was seasoning some chicken. She enjoys these moments the most. The unforced, quiet interactions. The safety.

She hears the door open and a ripple of discomfort goes down her spine- her father is home. She continues peeling the potato she's on, not acknowledging him because she's unsure of how his day went.

He comes into the kitchen, coming up behind his wife, wrapping his arms around her waist lovingly, to which she turns around in response. He caresses the bruise on her cheek, meeting her lips in a kiss. "Call me when supper's up," he tells her.

_It might be an okay day_ , Bev hopes to herself, knowing that it depends, he's always been very on and off like that.


	2. Laundromat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beverly goes through her daily chores, remembering what her father tells her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alvin is gross okay bye

Beverly was eight when she started cooking family meals and cleaning messes that weren't even her own. She tosses the rag into the green laundry hamper, trying to clean up just a bit more before she lugged it off to the laundromat later.

She drags it down to the front door, just a foot away from it so it would be easy to carry off in the planned approximately two hours. She heads off to the kitchen next, pulling out the chicken to thaw for later, her mom is meant to help her grill it when she gets home from work at the diner. 

She takes the broom from the pantry closet, swiping it across the floor, she doesn't even understand how it could have gotten this bad since she'd done it last. Though she knows it's been a bit, as her father had been yelling at her about it when he was usually much more careless.

She hums softly to herself, the smooth song playing in her mind clear as day, the humming simply to drown out everything around her. The sound of the pipes settling and the floorboards creaking send shivers up her spine, just a bit jumpier than she wishes she were.

She can't help but feel like Cinderella, but maybe not in such a bad way. Her father isn't so bad- so long as she follows his rules and does what he says as quickly as he can say it. Her mother wasn't often around, but she isn't dead, unlike the life of the old as time Disney princess.

She finishes sweeping, not wanting to mop now, it had only been a few days since she last mopped. If only her father took off his work boots when he got home instead of tracking his mess through the house over and over.

It's his career to clean, of course as a janitor. But when it came to home, she did all the work as the only one home. He doesn't know how to keep himself organized, only about a hundred kids who go to the Derry elementary school.

She puts the broom back in the closet, going back to the front door, she slips on her worn flats. The fabric tears around some of the edges and they hardly fit anymore, but they can't afford much else. She straightens the skirt of her dress, lifting the laundry basket to lug off to the laundromat.

Her hair bounces around her shoulders, the red tendrils being her favorite feature of herself by far. They curl around her neck, red hair is like the crown she can never take off. The strawberry color of the locks glow under the sun as she locks the door behind her with the rusted key she wears around her neck.

He pulls the basket behind her before electing to lift it with her scrawny arms, holding it by her chest. Whenever she feels it drop too low she kicks her knees up higher in her walking, almost deciding to hold it up by her chin and hold the edge between her jaw and neck but then she remembers that it's dirty laundry and thinks the better of it, just a lot too gross for her taste.

She kicks a pebble on the ground as she goes, hearing the small sounds it makes as it drops back to the dirt after being kicked and airborne for a moment or so. She receives some looks on her way, mostly those of pity and others of pride.

She gets one of two reactions when people see her working so hard on the household chores at her age. Pity that she has to, or the adults being proud and talking over and over about how they wish their kids were so obedient. If only they knew.

She arrives at the laundromat, chuckling slightly to herself as she always does, the U in the sign is broken so the sign only reads 'landromat' in bright letters and she imagines that's how it would sound spoken by someone with a thick accent.

She drags the laundry hamper the rest of the way into the building, the automatic doors making it much easier, she can't imagine how much harder it would be if she had to hold the door open and lug the hamper in.

She finds an empty station, the most nerve wracking part of the entire journey, laundromats are always full of odd people. People who look just a little wrong, or will stare at you the entire time. Once a man came up to her and just started stroking her hair. It was probably her least favorite experience in a laundromat, to this day she doesn't know why he did that.

She settles herself near the front window. Her daddy always taught her never to use the washers near the back of the laundromat, and she was forbidden from going any time past five pm. He doesn't explain why, just that it's mighty important that she listen to him.

She starts loading the machine, making sure not to put in any whites as she goes, she's turned a fair amount of her dad's white shirts pink by mistake. And her punishment for that was- something she'd rather not think about.

She finishes loading the washer (sans the whites) and pours in the blue detergent, shutting it with a satisfying smack. She sits herself on the bench next to the washer. She'd had her laundry stolen once before, and once again, the punishment was something she'd rather not think about.

She kicks her legs back and forth and scans the room, people watching as she calls it. It's usually women with babies that scream the entire time they're there or creepy men who stand in corners smoking their cigarettes as their dryers go.

She knows to keep away from them, her daddy doesn't even need to tell her to. Though, he has, calls them 'nothin but trouble' and makes her look him in the eye and promise not to mess around with them. 

She watches the laundry twist and tumble in the machine, a soothing sight for her. It's work that's getting done that she doesn't need to do herself, for only a nickel even!

A beep pierces her thoughts to signify that her clothes are clean. _Has it really been half an hour?_ She asks herself, man does the time pass by quickly around here. 

She pulls the sopping wet clothes out of the machine, putting her coin in to use a dryer. She clumsily shoves it all in, closing it behind and letting the warm air and spin cycle dry them. 

She looks down at her shirt, completely soaking wet. This is why her daddy says never to wear light colors to the laundromat, they get wet and you can see right through them. That's why she always wears dark colors here now, today it's a navy gingham dress that she write fancies.

She looks out the window, now, as the dryer goes. She watches people pass by, including a young man obviously struggling with his yoyo, probably gotten out of a cereal box. She giggles to herself at the scene.

That is her entertainment until the dryer goes off, telling her that it's done and her trip to the laundromat has come to an end.

She folds the clothes as she takes them out, placing them neatly in the basket she'd hauled them here in. She smiles to herself, a job well done even if it's not her favorite job.

She picks up the basket carefully, kicking the dryer behind her shut before walking to the automatic door and letting it open before she sets off down the dirt road to go back home. 

The load always feels lighter after it's been washed, the adrenaline of accomplishment taking her all the way back to her front door. Her father's truck is in the driveway so she knows he's home, and he'd be so proud of her.

She opens the door with the key hung around her neck, setting the clean clothes on the floor by the front door. "Daddy?" She calls, wondering how long he'd been back.

"Yes, Bevvy?" He calls back, coming into the foyer area to greet her, brushing a lock of her hair behind her ear as he starts to talk again, "You did well today and made good time at the laundromat, does that mean ice cream after dinner? I think it does," he says with a smile that most people would classify as terrifying and disgusting but it still fills Beverly with some sort of pride. He's her father and she can't seem to help it.

"Yes, please!" She says with a grin, half hugging him before pulling away, "Can I go play for a bit?" She asks as she's already finished all her chores. 

"Until your mother comes home yes, then you have to help her with dinner, remember that," he tells her, putting his hand on her shoulder before taking it away before she skips off to her room.


	3. The Boxcar Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beverly needs a hobby, and Ben Hanscom may inspire it.

The incidents that go on with Alvin Marsh only get worse through the years. As she grows into a preteen the abuse takes on a more sexual tone, which feels even worse and is generally even worse than when he used to hit her. She doesn’t get to have anything that’s just hers, even down to the cheap, cotton, butterfly printed underwear in her top drawer. Even that isn’t just private to her, but she doesn’t even get to know that, he only ever goes through her things once she’s gone off to school or somewhere else that he knows how long to expect her gone. She’s his little Bevvie and he’s scared of her growing up despite her already being twelve years of age, it’s clear there’s no stopping it. He’s scared of her fleeing the nest one day and doing what she does with him with other men. The simple thought of that fills him with so much rage that all the blood rushes to his face and makes his appearance reminiscent to an angry cartoon villain from the shows she watches on Saturday mornings when she gets the chance. Alvin Marsh can’t be contained.

Not even his wife, Elfrida. On the outside she seems mostly well meaning, but after all her own years of abuse, her daughter has become a sort of shield. She doesn’t really have any friends due to how Alvin always tries to keep her in the home and how she is often forced to keep quiet about what she goes through at home and what Al does to her and her young daughter, only at the tender age of eleven years old. She’d try to leave Al and take Bev with her but she’s too scared he’d go looking for her and it would get even worse for the both of them, and she doesn’t have but a clue of where she’d go in that situation. She’d met Alvin around the age of sixteen and she had given birth to Beverly not long after graduating high school. Not too much unlike Sharon Denbrough, though Sharon had to leave school before her graduation when she had her first child, Bill. It leaves Beverly Marsh and Bill Denbrough with a similar level of unluckiness in the cards life had drawn for them.

Before the end of sixth grade, Beverly gets her hair trimmed up to her shoulders and often wears sweaters and skirts with stockings, not too hot but covers most of the bruises unless Alvin goes for the face. He seems to really like going for her face. He also finds a little too much joy in seeing her in his own old sweatshirts and hoodies. He gives them to her on purpose, and for some reason, she doesn’t tie the favor with his perverted actions otherwise.

Due to all the odds stacked against her she has troubles making friends in school. Fifth grade just hasn’t been a good year for her. This is, until a sweet little note finds it’s way into her backpack. It’s a poem written on a scrap piece of notebook paper, obviously ripped out hastily. It’s simple and messy but it’s nothing like anything she’s ever received. For once, probably for the first time in years, she feels beautiful. Not the kind that fuels self obsession, more of the kind that plants a seed in her stomach which may start to grow into a flower that needs to be continuously cared for and nourished. And the boy who wrote the poem wouldn’t mind raising a whole garden of flowers for her. He surely wouldn’t mind except for one thing. He’d be much more comfortable remaining anonymous. Just as Beverly is, and many other kids their age, he’s insecure in himself. She’s never been a fan of her unusual red hair, but this poem has reminded her that it may just be a puzzle piece to how she has become her own kind of beautiful.

Despite the anonymity of the author, Bev finds herself thinking of him in nearly all of her free time. She puts the note in her underwear drawer for safe keeping, where she thought nobody would find it. She was wrong, though, because Alvin Marsh is a goddamn pedophile with no concept of boundaries. That night it’s worse than he usually is, particularly protective of her. After he’s done with Bev he moves onto Elfrida, he feels that he needs to mark his territory. The women he loves. It’s not right, but he’s brainwashed Elfrida so badly that she gets it, agrees with it even. And she knows that it would be far worse if she fought back and they didn’t just let it happen. Beverly really doesn’t like him when he’s like this. She still loves him but she hates that about herself. That she’s only her daddy’s little girl. Daddy’s little “Bevvie”.

She stands alone on the playground most free times during school. She doesn’t have many friends and she keeps to herself the majority of the time no matter how isolated from the world it makes her feel. The teachers don’t seem to mind her odd behaviors or the constellations of bruises that create an ugly galaxy on her milky pale skin. They simply tell her that instead of pacing she should bring a book and read on the bench, enrich herself as long as she’s not having fun like the other kids anyways. She would listen straight away but she doesn’t have a book, she’s already read anything to her interest that she has at home for class and their assigned reading, so it seems that a trip to the Derry Public Library is very much in order. She decides to go when her father is home so she can clean up before he comes home so she can be told that she’s a good girl and maybe even earn some money for a treat from the local candy store or an icee from the gas station.

“Bye, daddy!” she calls to him, pulling on her worn out sneakers. He doesn’t comment on it, too busy watching the television to pay any mind to her departure. She sets off for the library, hoping to find some Nancy Drew book that she doesn’t already have in her own collection. She walks down the road, watching people around her as she goes. People watching is most interesting in the late afternoon when the town center is most busy and the sidewalks are bustling with people. The library stands tall, the school even visible in the distance looking like a child’s toy in comparison. She looks up at the majestic brick structure before opening the heavy door and walking inside. The air conditioned but cozy atmosphere easily engulfs her. The adult section is pleasant and brings comfort to her, but she walks straight through the windowed hallway that connects to where the children’s books can be found.

The children’s book area is more joyous than the adult one. There’s a sound of giggling from the young ones listening to the story being read aloud. This one in particular is about a mischievous young gingerbread man running through town and causing trouble, like a less violent Henry Bowers. There’s a big teddy bear in the corner, his lap inhabited by a young girl who’s reading a book and twirling the ribbon around the bear’s neck with her right pointer finger. The children’s library is probably one of the safe feeling places for all of the children in Derry, which is why it’s often full of kids whose parents want them out of the house but are nervous about leaving them all completely alone. Beverly walks around, tracing her fingers over the spines of books as she passes them, taking the in the colorful appearances. She finds the books she usually borrows from this library, The Magic Treehouse and the Nancy Drew books that the librarian quite often recommends to girls around her age. She finds that she has read all of the ones on the shelf that seem worth reading based on the blurbs printed on the back. She wanders a bit further from that line of shelves, over to some other mystery themed chapter books where she finds a collection of books she’s probably heard about or seen around but never read before called the Boxcar Children, the confusing title of the series draws her in as soon as her eyes pass over the spine and read it.

She pulls the one with the #2 on it because she can’t find the one with the #1. She slides her thumb over the picture on the front cover. She decides that the backstory seems interesting enough, and the book looks pretty worn out, which she takes to mean that many little girls and boys have read and enjoyed this book. That, and that pushes her to want to be the next one alone that line of kids. She takes the book back to a table in the corner to read the first few pages and get a feel for it like her teachers have always taught before officially picking a book out that’s right. There’s another little boy sitting alone, one about her own age. She tucks her skirt under her legs as she sits in the seat diagonal from him. He hardly notices that she’s present until his eyes flick up to see her distinct ginger hair. This boy is one named Ben Hanscom, one of the quiet ones from her fifth grade class. They don’t really know each other but they’re content to sit in a comfortable library kind of silence at the table together.

The boy closes his notebook, which he hadn’t even been working in when she first walked over. He reads the book in his hands again after, his gaze dancing over the words though the strands of blond hair that hang in his face messily. He definitely needs a trim but he himself seems genuinely unbothered by it, it’s more annoying to the taller people he talks to when he has to blow his hair out of his face to look them in the eyes. He’s never been very good at making eye contact regardless, which takes Beverly hardly any time to notice.

She’s mostly unbothered by this, though, getting about twenty pages in before the book seems to be just right for her and she goes to check it out by the counter. Before she can walk away Ben speaks up for the first time since Beverly arrived at the table. “Number seventeen of that series is my favorite. It’s probably the best. It really starts ramping up then,” he says in a low voice, hardly looking up from his own story, one of the nonfiction type of “I Survive” books, which he’d moved onto after finishing one of the Hardy Boys books, planning to try and immerse himself into the world of R.L. Stine after this one. He really likes to read, the characters thought up by other people always seem to make him feel less alone in the event that he doesn’t have anyone real to talk to, which is a significant amount of his time ever since he moved to Derry, Maine from Texas.

Bev gives him a friendly enough nod and a smile to go along with it. Ben’s not much of a talker, but Bev hasn’t been either so it’s quite alright in her opinion. She pulls her library card out of the pocket of her worn floral dress. The sweet older woman working the desk gives her a fake business type smile and scans the barcodes before stamping the date inside the front cover of the book for her with all the rest of the stamps from other times it’s been taken out by kids. Bev takes them back when the process is done, thanking the woman and replacing the card in her pocket and hugging the book to her chest to get it home safely before the sun goes down. The sky is a reddish pink gradient painted across the universe in watercolor pale colors. It makes the walk home beautiful but puts more pressure on her to walk faster in order to meet her goal of arriving home before it gets dark out and hopefully be on time to assist her mother in completing the tail end of the last meal of the day. 

She gets home and lets herself in with the key she keeps on the necklace around her neck. She toes off her shoes still on the welcome mat by the door before putting her book stuff away into her bag for the next day of school. She heads into the kitchen, tucking her hair behind her ear. She peers in only to see her mom’s back against the fridge and her dad pressed up against her front, their lips melded together in a way where it almost looks like Alvin is trying to swallow her head whole. Bev turns on her heels and holds her breath until she’s back in her own bedroom. She wonders how to let her parents know that she’s home without having to walk in on that again before she realizes that she could probably just play some notes on her keyboard. The notes often rings through the house even when her door is closed, but this time she even chooses to keep the door open for good measure. She hopes that she doesn’t get in trouble for being too loud but if she does it probably would be less trouble than if she just walked in on their makeout session again carelessly. She’d get popped on her own mouth for that if she did.

She plays a few fussy high notes to start with before going into a simple melody created all her own. She’s never written it down on paper but she has it all in her head in terms of her muscle memory. She hears her father’s heavy boots walk past her door, probably to go to the living room and back to watching animal planet (where else would he learn his behaviors besides those shows?). She sighs and goes to the living room, pottering around the room and putting dishes on the table and ripping squares of paper towel for each member of the family. Dinner is about how it always is. Her mom asks about her day and she spews some made up crap about some friends that she doesn’t really have, may have not even talked to before. Her parents take it before talking about their own days. Al loves seeing the looks on the girls’ faces when he talks about all the gross stuff he finds in the plumbing at the hospital.

Going to bed is a relief after all the hours she’s been awake. Her pajamas are clean and her sheets are still cool, not yet too warm to be comfortable. She lays in bed and looks around her room until she lays her eyes on the night sky outside her window. She can’t help but think of Ben Hanscom without knowing who he really was. If he had not hidden behind the guise of a secret admirer maybe the time at the library would have gone very differently, if only she’d known an ounce of it.


End file.
